BY BEN LACEY
A little over a year ago, I deleted my X account.
I told myself it was because of what I was seeing: Christians speaking about other people with contempt. Cruelty dressed up as conviction. Snark masquerading as prophetic boldness. Brothers and sisters reducing image-bearers to objects of public ridicule.
Thankfully, my timeline was clean. I never posted a single snarky tweet. Whatever I lacked in prophetic unction I made up for in self-control. But then I realized something. In my heart, in my private conversations, over coffee and the telephone with friends, I was doing the same thing. I spoke freely about the people I thought spoke too freely. I was the Pharisee of Luke 18, thanking God I was not like those people, while committing the very sin I found so offensive.
The words of Jesus started to haunt me: “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak” (Matthew 12:36).
Every careless word. Not every public word. Not every posted word. But every single word. Jesus is not issuing a policy on social media conduct. He’s issuing a warning that our speech may be free in our nation, but it’s not free in heaven.
Put simply, we must stop treating our speech as a matter of strategy but as a matter of holiness.
When Christians disagree about the right nature of their speech, the arguments usually go one of two ways. The first says, “Watch your tone because it affects your witness.” The second then snaps back, “Speak freely and sharply because boldness is a mark of faithfulness.” The first guy—it’s basically always guys—uses his speech as a tool for winning people by avoiding offense. The second wields his speech as a weapon for winning arguments through offense. Despite the contrasting tactics, notice the overlap: both guys primarily think of their speech primarily through the lens of strategy, not morality.
But the Bible argues that speech isn’t about strategy, preference, or personality, but sin and righteousness. That’s why gossip, slander, and division aren’t just unwise—they don’t just lack “winsomeness”—they actually violate God’s law. Such careless speech will be judged not because it failed to win people, but because God is holy, we bear his image, and He requires personal, perfect, and permanent obedience. We tame the tongue not to become more persuasive, but more righteous, more Christ-like.
The New Testament is full of warnings about our speech.
Paul writes in Colossians 3:8–9: “But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices.”
For Paul, Christians must speak differently. To return to slander and obscene talk is a theological contradiction. It’s a resurrected man acting like he’s still in the grave.
Let’s also consider Galatians 5: “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (5:19–21).
Look through that list and note how many of the works of the flesh are most often “evident” through our speech: enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions. These aren’t exotic sins; they’re respectable ones. They’re what church members say to each other after service, what elders text one another after the meeting. A tongue that consistently produces strife and division is not a personality quirk, and it’s certainly not a badge of honor. Instead, it’s a piece of evidence that someone is walking by the flesh and not the Spirit. And according to Paul, such a person is walking like someone who will not inherit the kingdom.
Of all the passages that bear on this, Titus 3 may be the most humbling. Paul instructs Titus to remind believers to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to show gentleness and courtesy to all people (3:1–2). Then he gives his reason: “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another” (3:3).
The ground of gracious speech toward difficult people is that we once were those difficult people. We passed our days in malice; we hated others and were hated by others. But God was merciful to us. The Christian who speaks of others with contempt has forgotten who he was. He’s forgotten how and why he was saved. He’s forgotten—or he’s a fraud.
The New Testament never celebrates those who use their words as weapons to get what they want or shame those who stand in their way. Sure, there’s room to correct opponents, even sharply. But Paul reminds Timothy that correction is never an end in itself; it is always in service of winning the erring to repentance through gentleness and patience (2 Timothy 2:25).
Let’s return to those haunting words of Jesus from Matthew 12. We all so desperately need to hear and heed his warning: every careless word will be accounted for on the day of judgment. Not only the ones that got screenshots, or the ones that went viral, but all of them. The ones in the group chat. The ones in the car on the way home from church. The ones spoken in the privacy of a home by a man who deleted his X account and thought that made him clean.
In the midst of this warning, there is good news. The Christ who speaks this warning bore the condemnation our careless words deserve. Even our careless words after conversion cannot undo his finished work. We have been bought by his precious blood, not our perfect speech.
This precious truth should not embolden us to speak carelessly, but carefully. A right understanding of the gospel should always produce right thinking, right living, and right speaking. It should produce a great desire in us to speak, not as citizens of earth, but of heaven.